Forgiven
by Bob J Montonelli
Summary: Minority Report slash story, post movie. John Anderton goes to visit his old friends, ex-Officers Gordon Fletcher and Jeff Knott. They get to talking. R for language and m/m...y'know...stuff. Spoilers for the whole damn movie (duh)
1. Chapter 1

He knows this place—this section of DC. It is old and new, apartments rising out of the mad tangle of mag-lev streets, clawing, reaching, seeking the sky. Cheap concrete from latter part of the twentieth century; more powerful duracrete from a few years back. Everything looks the same, every balcony, every window, whether misty from a resident's shower, cracked from a child's game of ball, obscured by curtains.  
He knows this place.  
The man at the front desk of 348 Manhattan looks at him, bored. Stamps him in, gestures. He doesn't know the man—that much has changed. But not the worn blue carpet, the yellowing paint on the walls. The grease-shined wooden doors, their numbers hanging loose and forgotten. In the days just before, just after, his divorce, Anderton called this place home—at night, at day, working and not.   
Because back—six years, four years, two, one, a month—back then, Fletch and Knott welcomed him. Smiled when they saw him come in, hung on gamely no matter how enraged, how scared, how piss-drunk or high on dope he was. It didn't matter—even though Fletch was a hothead, would slap him into sobriety on a twenty-minute max—there was always Knott, quiet, bigger than them both, experienced and patient by two, three years. It was enough—enough to make Fletch swallow his worry and rage and go make coffee, enough to make Anderton himself sit quiet on the couch, still and quiet, until finally he would allow a tear or two.   
Would they still welcome him now?   
Up a flight of stairs, two, seven, ten. He tests himself on these stairs—if he has the energy for endless flights of stone steps, he has the energy for Fletch and the desperation to see them and damn the consequences. And he'll know then—he'll know if they welcome him. If Fletch has the same hothead rage and Knott the same crazy patience for them both. He'll know. He has to know.   
The hall smells soft and bitter like smoke and coffee and old beer. It's eerily silent, and the carpet goes crush-crush, crush-crush beneath his feet. The numbers pass him, reminding him of the showdown with Crow. But he knows the door by heart, number or not. Last on the left, cracked and battered, so much like the whirlwind of nights spent like bachelors, lying on the couch and the floor and eating whatever wasn't crawling with mold from the fridge.   
A pause—does he dare? He knows his options--  
//'You have a choice.'//  
Agatha's unused voice.   
//'You have a choice.'//  
Stay or go. Forgive, forget, bitter past arguments that surface unbidden. Touches that healed what no words could reach, caresses in the dark in a giant bed, and why did two men have one bed anyway? Who cared, then or now? Not him. Not John Anderton.   
He knocked—once, twice. Pause, silence, worry. Three, four times, harder. He'd punch the door in just to hear Fletch's voice, full of rage at the bill for a new one.   
"*What*?" Growling, intense, it's clear that Knott isn't expecting company. The door cracks open, caught by a taut brass chain. Two dark eyes set like black diamonds in a hard-jawed face peer out, blinking, tired.  
It is, after all, nearly two in the morning. 


	2. Chapter 2

"What? Who's there?"  
"It's me."   
The two words that always opened the doors between them. The diamonds soften to charcoal. Click, clatter, clink. Hands he knows drag him inside, in an instant before protest he is hugged, breathed in, crushed by Knott's powerful, forgiving arms.   
"Dammit, boss, it's good to see you!"  
Adrift from reason in a sprawling, spiraling moment, his arms slide in a daze around Knott's chest. He leans in, leans deep, tries to mesh with the last friend he remembers having, apart from Fletch.   
"Jeff? Hey, Jeff, whozzat? What brain-dead Jehovah's witness knocks on the door at two in the--" A deep, phlegmy yawn "--fucking morning?" Fletch appears, blonde, rumpled, pale in the dull light from the hallway. He stops as he sees the half-taboo before him.   
Good-cop, bad-cop. Hanging on a razor blade, suspended almost in time.   
Fletch's head snaps hard to one side, as if to clear it.   
Anderton slides from Knott's grip, body reluctant, mind cleaved in two. He sees the toss-up happen in Fletch's child-blue eyes, sees the shine of some decision.   
"Boss." So soft he can hardly hear it, but it's there. "Boss. We wondered where you'd got to."  
Knott is cracks his knuckles, gives them both a surreptitious glance, ready to step in should things get ugly. Back to normal, indeed.  
"Nowhere special," he replies, skirting the issue.   
Blue warms from the winter sea to a calm summer sky. A hand reaches out to his arm, a faint touch, a smile. "Come on. I guess I'd better make some coffee, huh?"   
They laugh. They all laugh.   
  
And Fletch makes the coffee, like he always did before, and they sit around an enormous silver pot of the stuff like members of some bizarre cult.   
"You broke up with her." It's not a question. They've been through this routine before. Over and over. Knott pleading, Fletch beating.   
"Yes." He feels like something under a microscope.   
"What now?" Fletch growls, swirling his coffee moodily.   
Anderton lies back on the floor, staring at the ceiling. He doesn't know quite what started it this time. Arguments, broken glass, the loneliness of a narrow couch. He covers his eyes, the one that works and the one-not-quite, speaks slowly. "She's pregnant."  
Silence. Unfamiliar here. Mag-levs buzz outside, a sotto hum in the distance. Through thin walls he can almost hear laughter, honeymooning lovers in the night. He peers cautiously from the protective cover of his arm. Knott is looking at the floor with a deep frown furrowing his forehead. Fletch stares off at nothing, still as stone, but in the next instant, a furious cry of rage and frustration escapes him and he leaps to his feet.   
"You stupid fuck! Jesus Christ, are you insane?" The man kicks him, hard, in the leg. "Get up and look at me, dammit!"  
He tries. He does. And Fletch kicks him again, then stalks off around the room, striking walls and fixtures as he goes. Knott just shakes his head.   
"Gordo--" he says softly. "Gordo, stop. Before you hit something sharp."   
A string of whispered curses drift to Anderton's ears.  
"FuckingcocksuckerofahalfbuggerednitwitgethimselfscrewedoveronemoretimeIdontknowwhattodoohthatgoddamnseersuckingmoron..."  
As Fletch rounds the near corner of the room, the curses drift off again into the ambient noise of the city. Somewhere police sirens whoop and wail, but they are far, far away from here, or sound like it.   
Anderton sits up, hugging his knees to his chin. All of a sudden he feels alone, apart from these two. Where has he been for three months? In his posh apartment in Baltimore proper, making love to a wife he thought he missed but isn't so sure of now. Fletcher and Knott are...different. They all are. Where is the safety line that once he was bound to? Where is the camraderie of a job well done, the adrenaline rush fading in the afternoon sunlight, in the early mist, in the moonlight? 


	3. Chapter 3

The three of them, enemies by default, crashing through a window. Breaking someone's family—again. As if a mad-crazy-desperate act of defiance to the system that threatened to tear them apart.   
//"You don't have to run."//   
Fletch was just as lost as he was then. It was in them all, but Fletch said it, pleading, helpless, hopeless and the second in command, the responsible one, who could have spoken what anyone felt but Fletch? It hadn't been right then, and it wasn't now. Because it was all the same--  
Fletch still saying what everyone knew but no one wanted to be stupid enough to say.   
Knott still solid as the walls he went crashing through.   
Anderton still aloof, still boss, still the captain and the link to suit-and-tie men who made all the wrong decisions.   
A hand touches his shoulder and he looks up and there's Fletch, looking down at him with the strain riding high on his face, tautening the muscles in his neck, just a shade off, not even that, from the look when he's coming, when the last low grunt escapes from his teeth and—//God he's beautiful, did I ever tell him that or was I too chickenshit?//   
He looks like he's about to speak, but for once clamps his mind over his mouth and just half-sits, half-falls, a graceless jumble of bare limbs, landing hard, landing tired. He rubs his eyes, and then looks at Anderton as if searching for something—someone—lost.   
None of them was ever good at the talking part of this. Not even good ol' motormouth Fletch, who talked whether it was stupid or not.   
"Did she want you back?"  
"Yes. She said...she missed me."  
"Did you miss her?" Knott is somehow on the other side of him, rough hand planted firmly on his back.  
"Ye—I—uhh...umm...well..."  
"It's a fucking yes or no question, John."   
Oh, thank god for Fletch. Like a choking man slapped on the back, he spits out the first thing that attaches to his tongue. "I missed her, but then, I didn't know her, and, I think I didn't miss her. I love her. But I don't...want...to go...back." He is amazed by the wonders the human mind can work when it comes loose from common sense, reason, and logic.   
Except that it all seems to make sense now.   
From the first time--  
//"Jesus, John. Sleeping in the office. Come on—the precogs will futz with your head for sure."  
"Only if you're here."//  
--To the last--  
//"John?"  
"Yeah?"  
"You keep staying here, we'll have to split the rent threeways."  
"Please stay."  
"You think I could leave?"  
"Jeff, he loves us!"  
"Regardless. You're guarding the sides of the bed."//   
--Everything in between. Five years.   
//"You are one crazy son of a bitch. Sir."  
"Gordo, make the damn coffee—John, what're you doing?"  
"Just hold onto it, okay?"//  
--Five years, three, four days a week--  
//"Hold still."  
"I am."  
"Who's moving?"  
"Not me."  
"Jeff. The cat."  
"Fucking christ."//  
--And he knows he isn't dead.   
But his whole life is flashing before his eyes. Or parts of it.   
The hand slides up the back of his jacket, rubbing a part of his spine that Lara never managed to find. Fletch is breathing in his ear, driving him insane.   
The last time they did this, a ball was spat from the precogs' machine with his name drilled into it the next morning. Then in the afternoon, he'd run. They'd chased him, of course, as was their duty—and he'd hurt them both. Physical, mental, emotional, whatever—he'd done it to save himself.  
"I'm sorry," he says.  
And the hand stops rubbing his back, wraps around him, pulls him close. He is several inches shorter and several more pounds lighter than Knott, and finds himself being held as easily as though he were a child. Hard, callosed fingertips stroke his stomach and side.   
It takes him a moment to realize that Fletch is poking him to get his attention.  
"John?" A sharp poke. "Hey, John. Boss. Don't be sorry, okay? Whatever you did, boss, don't be sorry. It can't be anything we wouldn't do."  
"I ran," he insists. "I hurt you." He sounds like a petulant six year old—his words are something Sean would have said before he was killed.   
Knott laughs, a tight rumble next to Anderton's ear. "Tax dollars pay for good padding, boss. We're okay. We're not dead. You're here." The unspoken reassurance in his tone: you're home. 


End file.
